Hi all,
I write today at the back end of a nine-day break from TOA. This is my longest break of the year (and perhaps longest break ever) and I was a little apprehensive about how long it might take me to get back into a good writing rhythm. My concerns, it seems, were fair but misplaced, as I’ve found that the time away did little to erode my ability to produce pointless filler for this space.
Today’s return to writing is in some ways my last reunion of the Thanksgiving period. This time of the year always seems to work out in the same way – the week of Thanksgiving becomes a series of small reunions. The 2018 version was my longest one to date, a span of ten days filled with reconnecting and catching up. And just as I discovered with today’s writing, I was delighted to find that despite the time apart very little had changed in my most important relationships.
In fact, the most significant change I noticed was in myself. The magic of seeing old friends is how quickly and easily we can slide back into long-lost routines. In some ways, a reunion means living nostalgia, a real time exercise of time travel as we instantly revert back to the person we used to be. But in the back of my mind throughout these past few days, I also noted the recurring thought – I’ve changed. It's hardly breaking news to say I’m not quite the same person I used to be, of course, but nothing seems to highlight these changes better than closely observing myself as I interact with people I haven’t seen in a long time.
Longtime readers will recall that I recently started using December as a month exclusively for rereading. I think the same idea from above is at play here – when I reread a book, my reaction gives me a good sense of how I’ve changed over time. Nothing seems to highlight these changes better than closely observing how my response to a book is different from when I previously read it. There are plenty of good reasons to reread a book but for me this is the most important reason. I don't think there is a better month for such an exercise than December, the time of the year when I find myself at my most reflective.
I’ll be back by the end of the month with a more careful breakdown of my rereading choices. Here’s the list, though, for those who are interested:
Daily Rituals by Mason Currey
Lean In by Sheryl Sandberg
Threads by Kate Evans
Pachinko by Min Jin Lee
One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez
Norwegian Wood by Haruki Murakami
Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki and his Years of Pilgrimmage by Haruki Murakami
Careful readers will note that Threads and Pachinko are two of my six finalists for the 2017 TOA Book of the Year Award. I wanted to point that out because, yes, you read that right, 2017, and I do promise we’ll wrap it up The Most Irrelevant Prize In World Literature before I start deliberations for the 2018 edition of the award.
Links…
One of the highlights of my November was that I did not get the flu. Was this due to my great immune system, perhaps, or maybe my world-class hand washing skills? No, reader, this was because I got a flu shot. But for some reason, we are in a day and age where it seems like vaccines are less popular than logic would dictate (editor’s note: logic suggests vaccines should be universally popular).
If you are feeling alone on your disease-free pro-vaccine island, dear reader, perhaps this short but thorough More Or Less episode about the statistics behind vaccines will make you feel better (and perhaps inoculate you against having sickened reactions to every news story about some child dying because of some disease we cured a century ago).
Inoculate against having sickened reactions?
What?
My eyes rolled right out of my head…
OK, so...
Look, we can rant and rave about people who appear to be making willfully dumb decisions and act all righteous about our worldview, or we can act like adults and try to educate as much as we can.
Right, whatever, because education is the solution for someone who turns down a vaccine.
Well, if you turn down a vaccine and you know what it does, then, like, what are the other options?
Lack of insurance coverage?
OK, but...
No access to vaccines?
Right, maybe, well...
OK, so maybe linking that episode doesn't really express what I think, but that's kind of a bad assumption on your part since I should be able to link to something independent of whether or how much I agree with it. I linked the podcast because it was informative and asked the right questions, but when it comes to vaccine refusal I think educated people are a little naive about why people refuse to get vaccinated.
What are those reasons, then?
I'm not going to come here and speak for people I haven't had the chance to talk to, but let's say that I generally have a hard time accepting the idea that people aren’t trying their best and the arguments I hear about why people reject vaccines seem to assume that these people are deliberately trying less than their best.
OK, so you obviously didn't go looking for people who are against vaccines... and since it's about the right time to ask this, anyway - did you leave the apartment at all this month?
Yes, I did go outside - I voted. And in a way, I think voting is related to what we are talking about here.
Voting in Boston was possibly the easiest thing I've done this year. I went to the library two weeks before election day for 'early voting', got in and out of there in about five minutes, and even wrote in Donald Trump for governor - I figured if he had another solid job offer, maybe he would resign his current post.
Bullshit.
OK, so maybe not all of the above is true, but my point is that when voting is easy, a lot of people we might otherwise accuse of being 'too uneducated' when they refuse to vote might end up casting a ballot.
And I think it kind of works the same way with other problems - we overlook simple obstacles like transportation barriers to focus on more exciting ideas like perfecting the education system. I don't think a little pie once in a while is a bad thing, especially around the holidays, but most problems don't require a pie in the sky solution. Most problems are simple, or at least comprised of simple parts, and breaking these parts down and tackling each one in turn gets a lot more accomplished than throwing our hands up in the air and prescribing some generalized nonsense like 'improve education'.
There might be a good point in there, but for now I do have to ask - if we solve all these so-called 'simple problems', aren't we still left with uneducated people who refuse to get a vaccine just because they don't understand it?
I'm sure that's a very likely scenario, but when all the easier obstacles have been tackled, being left with a classroom to run or a pamphlet to hand out doesn't sound very daunting at all.
I think we're basically saying the same thing here, after all.
No, I think we're actually on completely opposite sides, but that doesn't mean we can't solve the same problems.
Right...
Anything else?
I think that's what I'm supposed to ask you!
I'm good for now, but I should clarify one last realization I had in November. I've heard a lot of different ideas about how the USA needs more holidays or should move some of the holidays around and in general I'm sympathetic to these ideas (even those who think the Monday after Super Bowl Sunday should be a holiday, just to have another excuse to drink). But I think the next holiday is plainly evident - if we want to strut around the planet we are slowly melting away in the name of The Democratic Experiment, the least we could do is back up our talk by making Election Day a national holiday so that we make it as easy as possible for everyone to vote.
Thanks for reading this month.
Tim
In the next month of... True On Average...
1. Let me know if you ever need to listen...
2. Jerry Jones... is the Prince?
3. People - stop defending Hitler!
